Schwarz
by Koala
Summary: How they met, and Crawford's first vision


Everything's black—as black as my walls  
  
Everything's black—we reach our hands out  
  
Everything's black—only candle light  
  
Everything's black—when the oracle speaks.  
-"Schwartz" by Die Prinzen  
  
He had never expected what had happened that day. He remembered clearly – being a seventeen year old American boy; awkward, stumbling, pizza-faced and nearly blind. He was skinny, solitary and generally unpopular with everyone – too weird, too dorky, too smart.  
He remembered walking through his high school to his next class, adjusting his classes when suddenly the world slipped away from him, white and gold flashed in front of his eyes and there was a thing; something intangible yet so very real. It was him, but it wasn't – he was older, stronger, built and he had a gun, of all things. He was killing someone, someone stupid and young, someone who had dared to cross his path.  
And just as quickly as it had come, it passed. He awoke on the floor of the hallway, blood dribbling slowly out of his nose where he had hit it on the hard linoleum floor and shards of broken glass dug into his forehead from where his glasses had broken. He heard laughing in the background, and teasing.  
He sat up and picked up the shattered remains of his glasses, trying to make out the fuzzy blobs of bodies and wondering if what he had seen was a dream, a vision, or both.  
  
Sex was a good fallback – a delicious drug, addicting, a useful way to get the things away from his head, something that would allow him to concentrate purely on pleasure, a distraction. He drove himself back onto the older boy's cock, kissing him on the lips and just allowing himself to feel. The boy who he was fucking, not really good-looking but decent enough, was one that he had found just that day, meandering the streets in search of a cheap whore and had found himself something a little better – not a cheap whore, but a slut who just wanted to get fucked.  
Once they finished, the boy leaned back into the stiff motel springs and panted softly as he got up, stretching his muscles and smiling even as the things entered his mind again.  
  
There was darkness all around him – he was immobile, his eyes closed against the light, even though there was none. But there was. He had to be there too, because he was everywhere. And everyone was on his side.  
He opened his eyes wide, perfectly calmly, trying to see him. But the one who he searched for was clever, or thought he was – he was trying to hide. Well, it wouldn't work. He stumbled to the edge of the room, ramming himself into the wall head-first.  
There was no pain. There was never any pain.  
  
He was pushed against the wall, his eyes fixed shut in pain. They knew that they were causing him pain – they knew that he was in pain, but they didn't care. He forced them away, and suddenly they flew; he saw them propel away as if by magic. He continued to run.  
Things moved for him, pushed over, knocked down, away. Gone, moving away without any sort of touch.  
  
He pushed his new glasses up slowly, carefully reading the doctor's diagnosis with a measure of disdain, then threw it away in frustration. He didn't care what anyone said, he was not insane. He had never been insane, and would never be insane.  
After the first time, it happened rather often – snatches, glimpses, sights seen with his peripheral vision as if it didn't really exist. But they did exist, and every time he saw one, he was surer of that fact – he was not and would never be insane.  
He was eighteen, almost nineteen, and taller than the previous year. His slight frame had filled out, his skin had cleared – the only physical trait remaining of the awkward boy was his blindness, for which he still wore thick glasses.  
He moved carefully through the clinic until he found his doctor and slowly, because he knew that he had to, he took the unconscious man's neck in his hands and twisted it sharply, satisfied with the crack that accompanied the man's death.  
  
The drugs coursed pleasantly through his body as he walked down the streets, watching slowly and languidly for something – or someone – to take his mind off the voices. He swung his hips low and walked, slowly coming down from his euphoric high, his hands in his pockets as someone called at him in a very low voice. He turned and saw a man, older than him by a great deal, the man's hands in his pockets, one blue eye and one green, blonder than snow.  
He shrugged and walked to the man, slung one leg around the man's waist and pushed their bodies together, pleasure spiking through his system as the man's inner voice faded and he could concentrate on himself for a while.  
  
He slitted his eyes, a bare bar of light hitting the floor of his cell, and tried to spot him against the dark. He was tied up, differently this time, with his hands tied in the air by a pair of iron manacles that chafed deliciously against his skin and his legs dangling in the air. He heard voices outside his cell, but he knew, he knew, that they were talking about his insanity.  
He admitted that he was insane. He knew. But it didn't matter, because all that mattered was killing him, hurting him, revenge.  
  
He scowled as he watched from the roof of the building, huddled in a fetal, curled position, whimpering softly and trying to get them away from where they could find him. He closed his eyes and thought of something different – a pair of ocean-blue eyes, a hidden smile, a thick braid of dark brown hair.  
A crash below him signaled that whatever it was had happened again, and that he had to run.  
  
He was exactly where he needed to be.  
  
He smiled a knowing cat smile, swinging his hips, leading the two girls along. Both girls were of a larger build than he, and he knew that they thought he was a girl too. At fourteen he knew more about sex than most twenty year old trickers, and he enjoyed it more, too.  
He paused when he saw the boy in the street in front of him. The boy wasn't much older than himself, maybe five years or so. He wore a suit, immaculately clean, his blue-black hair slightly tousled over his violet eyes that were behind thick glasses.  
He spoke a clear, firm voice, his German slightly accented but otherwise perfect. But he ignored the boy's words, he paid more attention at his silence; he had no inner voice.  
"Will you come with me?" The boy asked him, and he didn't have to think twice.  
  
He heard voices, and he watched from his hiding place. Ever since he left the place where his revenge was stilled, he had been wary. Someone would be back when they discovered that he was missing.  
The voices passed, and he shred his forearm with his long nails. He bleeds...  
  
He cried, his tears going almost unheard in the cold night. He shivered, curled in the corner of the alleyway, under his empty cardboard box, and tried to warm his small body with his hands.  
The near-silence broke when someone lifted his box. He cried out when he saw a man, an older man who had thick glasses and wore a clean suit. The man picked him up carefully, not asking any questions but rather holding him in an awkward way and tried to hush him.  
  
He fixed his glasses as they moved in to their roomy apartment. The German had decided to take the room with the large windows, and he had taken the master bedroom for himself, fixing the smallest of the rooms for the little boy.  
There was another room, one that had a bolt that locked from the outside, one that was thickly padded from the inside. The last member would arrive shortly, brought in transport.  
He smiled, and thought back to his first vision, and nodded. 


End file.
